Night 1 last night in our AirBnB was comfy. Another new bed...this one like others is really 2 single mattress toppers on a wood base (unsprung and quite firm) which is a different sleeping experience. The Scandinavian (I assume) custom of having 2 single doonas (no sheets) and a small square pillow...just little things to get used to when travelling!

Home cooked breakfast (another new stove to learn) and we awaited our pickup to take us to Santa Claus village. The ultra cheerful guide Octavia, an argentinian who is here working as a tour guide, impressive bravery to up and leave home and just get travelling and working for the past 7 years, arrived spot on time. A couple more collection points and our small group of 6 headed the 15 minutes out of town to the Santa Claus village.

We had a booking to see Santa in person at 11:00am and we went through the magical workshop, past the time dilation device and in to see the big marn. Very fun! We elected not to purchase the photo. Outside and to the famous Arctic Circle line. I wasn't able to see the painted white line on the ground for obvious reason, but we had fun looking up to the live Youtube webcam of the arctic line at Santa Village. As Mike Wizowski from monsters inc would have said "I was on TV".

As the day moved on and we were shown the reindeer and plethora of shops, ready and willing to offer their goods, the true tourist hotspot nature of the place began to emerge. It appeared to be particularly popular with busloads of Asian tourists, replete with expensive clothes, plastic surgery and all in all, not really our scene. Apparently, Teddy Roosevelt's wife started the Santa Claus village here in the 1950s with a wood cabin and it has expanded ever since to the tourist mecca it is in 2025. The original log cabin built for her is still standing but unsurprisingly it is now also a shop. The presence of a military base with frequent jet flyovers is a sobering reminder of the neighbouring Russia. Finland shares approx 1000km of border with Russia, so Finland as Octavia put it is "always ready" but that it is nothing to worry about. Right. Buffet lunch and some time looking around before we were dropped back at our accom, along with a helpful tip of a possible site in Rovaniemi where northern lights can be seen, without the need for a drive out to the sticks! Down by the river he said.

So, onto the variety of websites/apps with predictions of possible aurora in the area whiled away the afternoon as we waited for night. A window of time with clear skies, sufficient solar activity, a local intensity index relative to the global value, plus a comfort index (temp and windspeed). The apps change regularly and at any one point in time, one app will be saying 3% chance whilst another will be saying 80%. Hmm. As ever the optimist, I agreed with the 80% one, so once twilight (both nautical and astronomical phases) had passed we set off on foot. Again, navigation challenge, icy paths and trying to approximate the exact location was "fun" but we made it down to riverside eventually.

The slight concern from a note in our welcome folder at the accom about thin ice and not venturing out in mind, we gingerly made our way to the ice's edge (the river is actually rock hard frozen...many people happily walk on it and even snow mobile speed machines occasionally hooned by out on the icy expanse). Sadly, not much was visible in the night sky for quite a while. The lights from the town make for interesting tricks of light, and the light is deceiving in the Artic. A couple of shooting stars and we were about to head home when an orange glow near the city appeared. Thinking it was another city light changed to the realisation it was the moon that we had seen also rising over Uppsala a couple of days ago. So we waited for it to rise above the horizon clouds.

Gleefully for us, the rising moon also saw the start of the aurora show. Great fun watching it ebb and stripe across the low night sky. Great tip from Octavia. Photos show more intense colour than with the unaided eye, but still a special thing to witness. For me, it is something like fishing where in order to experience the elation of a great fish requires time, effort, perseverance, frustration...but that to get the thrill, this part also has to be "leaned into".

Collapsed into bed late (for we oldies), but quite thrilled with another magical day in Finland. (The place is definitely warming on us after a challenging start...weather wise particularly and the very standoffish vibe of Finnish people and our joke that it feels like we're in West Russia not Scandinavia). There is very different feeling here, almost like a frugal post socialist/not quite capitalist feel to the town. Perhaps that makes the juxta with the cash laden tourists even more jarring? The locals are very private/wary and we can't quite describe it properly, yet.